How To Still Train When You Feel Drained From Work

Grad students finish their educations with the marathon of writing projects: the dissertation. In the year or two (or more) it takes to finish this monster, advisors remind writers not to take on too much outside the project. But what happens if you’re in training for an actual marathon at the same time? Both projects are physically and mentally rigorous, but if done right, they can actually complement each other. Here’s how anyone with a hefty writing workload can balance a demanding running schedule. Let running add structure to flexible schedules: It’s easy for a project to expand to fit the time you have; writers procrastinate, keep strange hours, and find it difficult to hit on a regular schedule. And yet consistency always makes a writer more successful. Different schools of thought advocate a daily word limit or “15 minutes a day.” Basing your schedule on the runs y...